biology

Raúl Rabadán

Raúl Rabadán is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Raúl Rabadán rather than just read about it. In short: Raúl Rabadán (born 1974) is a Spanish-American theoretical physicist and computational biologist. He is currently the Gerald and Janet Carrus Professor in the Department of Systems Biology, Biomedical Informatics and Surgery at Columbia University.

Key takeaways

Raúl Rabadán belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Raúl Rabadán to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Raúl Rabadán from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Raúl Rabadán (born 1974) is a Spanish-American theoretical physicist and computational biologist. He is currently the Gerald and Janet Carrus Professor in the Department of Systems Biology, Biomedical Informatics and Surgery at Columbia University. He is the director of the Program for Mathematical Genomics at Columbia University and previously the director of the Center for Topology of Cancer Evolution and Heterogeneity (2015-2021). He is the co-leader of the Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University. Dr. Rabadan received the 2021 Outstanding Investigator Award by the National Cancer Institute. At Columbia, he leads a highly interdisciplinary team of researchers from the fields of mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering, and medicine, with the common goal of solving pressing biomedical problems through quantitative computational models. Rabadan's current interest focuses on uncovering patterns of evolution in biological systems—in particular, viruses and cancer.

Career Rabadan is an expert on mathematical approaches to biological systems, genomics of cancer and infectious diseases. He received his PhD in string theory phenomenology, specifically the physics of string compactifications and intersecting D-brane configurations in the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain. From 2001 to 2003, Rabadan was a fellow at the Theoretical Physics Division at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2003 he joined the Physics Group of the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ. He studied the information paradox of black holes in the context of the Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory duality, and has proposed several experiments to search for axions. Since 2005 he has focused his research program on theoretical and computational problems in biology. In 2006 he joined The Simon's Center for Systems Biology at The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ. Since 2008 Rabadan has been a professor at Columbia University, in New York. He has applied quantitative approaches to modeling and understanding the dynamics of biological systems through the lens of genomics. He has focused his research on the evolution of two of such biological systems: cancer and infectious diseases. In particular, he has been working on the identification of driver mechanisms of evolutionary processes, characterization of key process dynamics to elucidate interactions. Rabadan is interested in understanding the evolution of infectious agents through the analysis of their genome, in particular RNA viruses like influenza and coronaviruses. His work in this area includes elucidating the origin of the influenza A virus subtype H1N1. Since joining Columbia in 2008 most of Rabadan's work has focused on cancer genomics approaches to understand tumor evolution and heterogeneity, mostly on hematological malignancies, brain tumors, and uncovering the role of non-coding mutations and splicing variants in cancer. His work on hematological malignancies has led to the identification of driver alterations in hairy cell leukemia, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, splenic marginal zone lymphoma among others. He has been working on identifying driver alterations in glioblastomas, longitudinal studies of brain tumor evolution under standard therapy and immunotherapies, uncovering the role of clonal heterogeneity in brain tumors, mapping the role of pharmacogenomics in precision oncology therapies. He has also been involved in studying the role of non-coding RNA and splicing mutations in cancer. He has been leading an active program to bring tools from computer science, physics and mathematics into the study of biological systems. He has been working on the application of topological data analysis to large scale genomic data and transcriptomic single cell data. He has recently developed foundational models to understand cell type specific transcriptional programs in human cells. Rabadan's scientific work has led to more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific publications, including in high impact factor journals (New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Science, Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Cell among others). Several of his results have been featured by the international press, including CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, Reuters International, and The Economist.

Books In 2020 Rabadan together with Andrew Blumberg, a topologist at the University of Texas, published a book Topological Data Analysis for Genomics and Evolution in Cambridge University Press. The books explores biology in the age of Big Data. This book introduces the central ideas and techniques of topological data analysis and its specific applications to biology, including the evolution of viruses, bacteria and humans, genomics of cancer, and single cell characterization of developmental processes. In 2020 Rabadan published Understanding Coronavirus in Cambridge University Press. The book provides a concise and accessible introduction that answers the most common questions surrounding coronavirus for a general audience, including an introduction about the origin and evolution of this virus, its relation to SARS and other respiratory viruses, among other topics.

References

External links Program for Mathematical Genomics Rabadan's Lab Homepage Center for Topology of Cancer Evolution and Heterogeneity webpage Archived 20 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Raúl Rabadán

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Raúl Rabadán claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Raúl Rabadán before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Raúl Rabadán ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Raúl Rabadán

In research: Raúl Rabadán appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Raúl Rabadán in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Raúl Rabadán is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1974 births, Autonomous University of Madrid alumni, Columbia University staff, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Raúl Rabadán outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Raúl Rabadán in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Raúl Rabadán means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Raúl Rabadán out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Raúl Rabadán in simple terms?

Why does Raúl Rabadán matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Raúl Rabadán?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Raúl Rabadán.